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THE JCSTIFICATION OF THE PRESENT WAR 

A S E R IVI O N 

PREACHED BY 

Rev. GEORGE F. PENTECOST, DT)., 

SUNDAY MORNIXCi. MAY 1. 1S08. 
{^Stenographic Report. ) 



••AM' WHKN YE SIIAI.I. HEAR OK WARS AND RUMORS OK 
WARS, BE YE NOT TROUBLED ; FOR SUCH THINCS MUST NEEDS 
BE ; BUT THE END SHALL NOT BE YET." — MaRK xiii, 7. 



LITTLE MORE than a year ago, at no small cost to 
,^ myself, because I loved and longed for my country 
'^ and felt that my place, my home and my work were 
here, I left my church and my happy home in dear old Eng- 
land and came back to America. And now our beloved 
country is at war with Spain, that lingering relic of unregene- 
rate and monstrous /^//-civilization — that country whose rule has 
been a burning blight and an unmitigated curse upon every 
spot over which her flag has floated and the feet of her cruel 
soldiers marched. 

The magnitude of the conflict upon which we have now 
entered, its duration and the portentous effect upon our own 
and other nations, no human being can foretell. 

Whatever may have been the differences of opinion as to 
the merits of the ccmtroversy between ourselves and Spain or 
as to the policy to be pursued in the settlement of the con- 
troversy before the declaration of war, in the breast of every 
true American there now can be but one conviction : we must 
drive the rapacious and bloodthirsty Spaniard from the shores 
of the Western World, and to this end we must stand by and 



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support our President in the conflict with the whole resources 
of our treasure and lives. 

(Jur brave country-men — compatriots in peace and war — 
are already in the front of the battle, both on the land and the 
sea. Our battle ships are stripped for the conflict, our swords 
are unsheathed, and already the boom of the guns of our navy 
have been heard in the first engagement for the deliverance of 
Cuba from the tyrant's rule, and for the expulsion of the 
Spanish power from our shores. 

It has never been my custom to turn aside from the direct 
work of preaching the Gospel for the sake of discussing the 
topics of the day, or to usurp the functions of the politician 
or the statesman. lUit in this crisis, patriotism, as it seems 
to me, is the synonym of piety, and to be a Christian is only 
to be a better citizen and a more loyal patriot. I am, there- 
fore, constrained, this morning, to use my pulpit for the dis- 
cussion of some aspects of the momentous question now occu- 
pying all our thoughts and to point out what I deem some of 
the great questions involved in the present struggle. 

I. As to the place of war in the Providential order of the 
world. War in itself considered is an evil, the horrors of which 
no words can too strongly portray. This is a statement in 
whicii,! trust, we are all agreed. That wars have been prosecuted 
on the one side or on the other from motives for which there was 
no possible justification, none of us deny. On the other hand, 
there have been wars of the righteousness of which we arc all 
equally persuaded; wars, not to have embarked upon, would 
have been disloyalty to country, to humanity and to God. 
Such a war this present one with Spain seems to me to be. I 
know there are those who believe that under no circumstances 
are Christians justified in participating in war; but when I 
remember that the Angel of Jehoxah came sword in hand to 
stand by Joshua in the concpiest and extermination of the 
vile nations of Canaan, and that in the end of this dispensa- 
tion, when the beast and the false prophet shall array the 
apostate nations against God and Mis saints, He who is called 
the " h'aithful and True " shall go forth in righteousness on 
a white horse, to judge and make war, I cannot accept the 
doctrine that under no circumstances is war justifiable. The 



out 

Hon H C Lodir^ 
J«. 16 Ofl 



8 

war to which I h;wc alkulcd, described in Rev. xix, will be the 
^,j last war of earth, and in it, on the side of rii^hteousness, the 
armies will be led b\' the Son of God Himself. In the mean- 
time, our text, in the words of Christ Himself, tells us that 
" wars must needs be." 

1. The "needs be" of war. What the convulsions of 
nature are — earthcjuakes, storms, tltxxls and tidal waves 
beneath ; thunder and lightning, waterspouts and tempests in 
the skies abo\e — in the economy of the material universe, 
wars are to the nations and their development. Scientists 
have not yet been able exactly to define in w hat way these 
great convulsions are necessary and useful in the physical 
economy of the earth, but they do not doubt that they have 
their ministry in the perfecting of nature. So we may not be 
able, with absolute accuracy, to determine the e.xact place 
wars occupy in the Providential order; yet are we persuaded 
that they are great factors in the development of the human 
race. 

" The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof;" and 
so are the people and nations of the earth. He sendeth war 
and He giveth peace. He maketh the wrath of man to praise 
Him and the remainder of wrath He restraineth. 

That God has overruled war as a great instrument for the 
advancement and civilization of the people of the earth, there 
can be no doubt, and we should devouth' try to understand 
this great problem. 

2. The Providential Nations. The Hebrew people, for the 
ultimate progress of the world, through her wars, were 
cemented and moulded into a great nation ; especially through 
those wars, commanded of the Lord, against the e\il and 
oppressive nations which surrounded them. In like manner, 
the wars out of which the Greek and Roman states were 
born, and through which they reached the culmination of 
their powers, were instruments of God for the advancement of 
the world's civilization. The greatness of European ci\i- 
lization is largely the reflex product of her wars. Time will 
not allow me to pass them all in re\icw, but to mention only 
some of them. Wjio can say what the barren ami stagnant 



state of European civilization would ha\c been but for the 
results of war. 

It has been said that " the blood of martyrs is the seed of 
the Church." It mij^dit well be said that the blood of patriots 
is the root of human freedom. It was war that led to the 
partial civilization of the hordes of Northern barbarians who 
poured down upon and ultimately destroyed the Roman 
Knijiirc. It was war, under the stron<^ hand of William of 
Normandy, that broke up the petty kinc,Moms of England and 
made way for the building up of the greatest of modern empires. 
It was war that accomplished and solidified the United King- 
doms of England and Scotland. By two centuries of wars, 
fanatical and sui)erstitious as they were, it was the Crusades 
which awakened Europe out of four hundred years of sleep 
and stagnation and prepared the way for the Renaissance, the 
most remarkable awakening the world has ever experienced. 
Time does not permit me to speak at length of the Thirty 
Years' War, or the heroic struggle of the Dutch Republic and 
the Netherlands with Philip the Second. No one doubts the 
great civil wars of England, culminating in the establishment 
of the Commonwealth and the overthrow of the Stuart dynasty, 
made for freedom and progress. I scarcely need mention the 
epoch of the French Revolution and the American War of 
Independence. The French Revolution — that wild hurricane 
of war, that upheaval of human passion, at least swept from 
the earth the main branch of the Hourbon dynasty — a corrupt, 
selfish, cruel and tyrannical house, the tail of which still 
wriggles in Spain — did much to make way for the establish- 
ment of human rights and liberty antl struck a final blow to 
the monstrous doctrine of the divine right of kings. The 
American War of Independence made way for the most ad- 
vanced step the world has ever taken in the direction of 
human libert>-. the freedom of conscience and the establish- 
ment of constitutional, democratic and republican govern- 
ment. The culminating battle of Waterloo ended the Na- 
poleonic dynasty, and forever destroyed the greatest military 
despotism with which the world was ever threatened. The 
greatest of modern conflicts, the Civil War, ended the institution 
of human slavery and changed the American Union from a con-^ 



■geries of sovereign states into a Nation great and powerful. 
No thoughtfvil man doubts the world-wide benefit of that war. 
Even the late Franco-Prussian War has made for peace and 
progress, notwithstanding the fact that the military Republic 
of France still plays the martinet with its people, and "William 
the Egotist" struts on the stage of European politics and seeks 
to revive and play the part of a heaven-sent king, at liberty to 
shake his mailed fist in the face of the Twentieth Century. 
This is but a rapid and imperfect sketch of the course of war 
in the Western World. Like a succession of mighty gang 
plows, war has struck its sharp share into the rich soil of the 
nations.and turned furrows deep and subsoiling, into which, 
bv liberal handfuls, the seeds of peace, progress and of a 
better civilization have been sown. Like a mighty battering 
ram, war has broken down enclosing walls, in which nations 
have grown corrupt and stagnant. Out of these turmoils, 
Christiantity has risen reformed from the corruption and super- 
stitions of Rome, and largely freed from unholy political alli- 
ances with world powers, to foster education, broaden human 
culture and mould mankind more and more into the Lnage of 
God. Light and learning have risen from bloody battle fields 
and shed their beneficent rays abroad over the world of men 
and nations. That in all wars there have been much of bar- 
barian, wicked and selfish ambition, no one doubts. But 
against these unholy motives and evil passions, righteousness 
has protested, and liberty and the human conscience have been 
awakened to defend themselves and enlarge the boundaries of 
freedom. No thoughtful student of history can doubt that 
God has used and overruled war for the promotion of human 
progress and the general development of the race. 

IL But what of this present war? This is our fifth 
great war. The War of Independence was an holy one, a 
war fought for the whole human race. The war of 1812, our 
second, and for all time our last war with England, our 
mother country, has been justified by time. The Mexican 
War, though of doubtful morality in its motive, has proven in 
its results to have been one of the most beneficent conquests 
of modern times. We have only to think what our Pacific 
•Coast would have been under Spa'iish-Mexican rule, and 



6 

what Mexico herself has become, largely through lessons 
learned by reason of her proximity to this great Anglo-Saxon 
Republic, to call forth abundant thanksgiving to the God of 
Nations for permitting and overruling that struggle for the 
purpose of national expansion and good human government. 
Of the Civil War of 1860 I have already spoken. It ended 
in the destruction of human slavery; set our own country free 
from an unholy institution which would always have kept us 
the prisoners of unrighteousness; and converted an immature 
and loosely united confederacy of free and sovereign states into 
the greatest, most prosperous, and freest nation on the earth. 
What this war will do for us I may attempt to outline. 

1. One of the commonest questions asked by those who 
are less in sympathy with the Government than are most of us 
is, "For what are we going to war with Spain?" This is 
a pertinent question and ought to be answered. It seems to 
me that those who ask this question are among those who can 
only see the justification of war in some selfish or ambitious 
motive. Certainly we are not at war with Spain for war's 
sake. Nobody in this country desired this war, barring army 
contractors and a possible few individuals who saw in it an 
opportunity for exploiting their country for contracts. All 
the great business interests, those of trade and finance, 
have deplored it and looked upon it as a misfortune for the com- 
mercial interests of the country. The peaceful and quiet peo- 
ple of the land have not desired it. The wisest and soberest 
statesmen of the country have struggled against it. Our 
noble President and his loyal cabinet have gone to the verge 
of exposing the country to shame and dishonor in the sight of 
the nations to avert it. Win-, then, are we at war? It is 
not to promote business. It is not for any greed of territor}'. 
It is not even for revenge because of the dastardly and cow- 
ardly act of the instruments of Spain in blowing up our war 
ship in a time of peace and when on a friendly visit to the 
harbour of Havana. It is not for military and na\-al glory. 
For in this country, at least, the army and na\y are the ser- 
vants and not the masters of the government and people, as 
is the case in France. It is not for political advantage ; for 
in the conduct of a great war, political parties and policies are 



rather imperilled than strengthened. In the War of Indepen- 
dence we fought for the right to govern ourselves. In the 
conflict of 181'i we went to war to protect ourselves from the 
aggressions of Great Britain on the high seas. In the Me.xican 
War we sought the extension of our territory to the limits 
of its natural boundaries toward the Pacific and the Gulf. In 
the War of 18()(), primarily, we fought against national dis- 
integration or for self-preservation. The destruction of 
human slavery was not the motive, but the providential in- 
cident, of that war. In this war we are fighting for a pure 
and unselfish principle, and embarking upon amission which will 
cost us millions of treasure and possibl\- many thousands of 
lives, out of which no direct commercial political, or national 
gain can come to us. We are fighting, first of all, to establish 
the right of a struggling people, our nearest neighbor, to free 
themselves from a pitiless and raj^acious foreign power and 
set up an independent government of their own choosing and 
making — a right which we ourselves claimed and fought for 
in the American Revolution. We are fighting for humanity's 
sake, to resist the cruelty and oppression of a merciless and 
tyrannical military despotism to starve and kill by the scores of 
thousands, poor, helpless and friendless non-combatants, and 
to put a stop to a reign of infernal cruelty and barbarism, in- 
finitely worse than that practiced against the Armenian by 
the "unspeakable Turk." And, finally, we are willing instru- 
ments in the hand of Providence for the expulsion of Spain from 
the shores of this continent, over which God has made us 
overseers, and to lead the way in the elimination of one of 
the two anachronous nations which still linger in the civilized 
world, to the detriment of luini;in liberty and progress, to 
blight and curse the people. If we shall help to clear out 
and destroy the present Spanish dynasty, then Europe may 
pluck up courage to make an end of the Turkish despotism. 
These are some of the higher results visible in the near future 
which I hope this war will bring to pass. 

There is a sentiment that the cost, in men and money 
and loss of property, of the late Civil War, was so stupendous 
as to forever prevent us from again engaging in such conflict. 
During the four years that war lasted the entire loss of life 



8 

in both Northern and Southern armies — of men killed in bat- 
tle, those who died in hospitals, or, after the close of the war, 
of diseases contracted in it — was something less than 500,000, 
out of a Nation numbering 40,000,000. During the past 
three years, according to the best obtainable statistics, from 
i>r)0,000 to 400,000 Cubans have been starved to death and 
murdered by the policy of that Butcher Weyler, out of a 
population of less than 2,000,000; a loss, if not quite so great 
in numbers as that resulting from our Civil War, amounting to 
infinitely more in proportion to the population. We make 
war to stop that destruction of defenceless human life. 

I saw a picture the other day of the Queen Regent and 
her little son — that pair for whom so much sentimental sym- 
pathy has been expressed. Be it remembered that that Queen 
for two years, during which the Butcher Weyler has carried on 
the campaign in Cuba, has never once lifted up her voice in 
remonstrance. In this picture, the Queen, in splendid attire, 
with a crown upon her head and her little son by her side, is 
appealing to the European powers against the great Nation 
which threatens to sweep down upon her and rob her little son 
of his kingdom. On the other side was another picture 
representing a starved and emaciated Cuban woman with her 
little son — a living skeleton mother with a skeleton child 
upon her knees. The question is, whether the sympathy and 
interest, the strength and righteousness, the Christianity of this 
great Nation shall sit still in the interests of the Queen and 
her little son, and suffer Spain to continue her accursed policy, 
which has made for misery and bloodshed for the past four 
hundred years, or whether the Cuban mother and her child, 
and they whom they represent, shall be set free fnnn that 
power and allowed, under a better government and under 
happier auspices, to develop into great and good and noble 
people. 

Though we have undertaken this war unselfishly, there 
can be no doubt that there will come to us certain reflex- 
benefits which will be more than compensation for all it shall 
have cost us. 

1. It will make for the final obliteration of the old line of 
division between North and South, and will knit our people 



9 

together as nothing else could do. Patriotism will take the 
place of sectionalism. When Patrick Ilcnry was making one 
of his impassioned speeches, at the time of the American 
Revolution, he said, in answer to a question asked as to what 
George the Third had done for America: "Yes, George has 
done something for us. lie has obliterated the geographical 
lines between X'irginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland; and, 
whereas, a short time ago, I was a Virginian, now 1 am an 
American." And so, I think, one of the results of this war 
will be the blotting out of sectional and. so far as patriotism is 
concerned, state lines, the lingering animosities of men who 
still hold that the State is greater than the Nation, and that 
the time shall come when we shall cease to have brilliant sol- 
diers drilling at the expense of the State, who, when the Nation 
is in peril and calls for volunteers, will say they are not sol- 
diers of the United States, but only hold allegiance to their 
own State, and dictate terms to the Government upon which 
they will serve for the defence of their country. 

The soldiers of the North and South, fighting together side 
by side, who once confronted each other in bitter strife will, 
by their blood, if it shall be spilled, wipe out and merge the 
old colors of blue and grey into new shades of beauty which 
no chemistry could devise. 

2. It will hasten on and make way for the longed-for union 
of the great Anglo-Saxon people; and if it does not lead to 
an actual alliance between England and America, it will, by 
reason of the generous friendship of England toward us in this 
conflict, remove all the bitterness which has rankled in our 
hearts for four generations past, and bind the great English- 
speaking peoples together in a solidarity never to be broken, 
and in bonds of friendship nexer more to be severed, and pos- 
sibly lead to a combination of power which, in all coming 
time, shall be able to dictate peace to the world and so tend 
to the ending of war. 

I}. I am neither financier nor statesman, but I firmly 
believe that the necessities of this struggle will tend toward 
the final establishment of the currency of our country on a 
solid basis of "-old, from which it will never more be removed. 



10 

This is a question which, in such a discourse as this, one may 
not discuss at any length. So long as we must needs have 
money wc must look to the fountain heads of finance for it. 
W'e cannot sell our bonds or establish our credit in the world 
so long as we arc playing and coquetting with a currency that 
is not as sound and stable as the best on earth. They are not 
patriots who are at this time taking advantage of this crisis to 
exploit their selfish financial policy. 

4. There are other great ends which the war will accom- 
])!ish for us. 

a It will check the sordid passion for money getting, 
which has dominated our people for the last thirty-five years. 
Love of money will give place for a season to love of coun- 
try. Xext to the fear and love of Ciod, the highest passion 
of the human heart is that love of country. To arouse the 
patriotism of our people will awaken a loftier set of emotions 
and will go farther towards making us a braver and more 
high-minded people, than if we should all succeed in becom- 
ing millionaires. England's greatness is not in her vast 
wealth, not in her old, aristocratic families, but in that intense 
love of country — that splendid and unselfish dexotion to her 
honour — that has made her the most heroic nation on the earth. 
" For God and St. George " has been a passion and a battle- 
cr\- which has kept England to the fore for six centuries, and 
will, I l:)clieve, keep her there to the end of time. 

b The long period of peace and extraordinary prosperity 
which this country has enjoyed since the close of our ci\il 
war, together with the marked absence during that time of 
any great religious awakening, has made way for the growth 
of luxurious habits on the part of the rich and well-to-do, and 
for dissipation and idleness on the part of the irresponsible 
and unambitious masses. As a people, we ha\e been largely 
living in the lower half of our natures. With eating, drink- 
ing and being merry, coupled with a wide-spread and growing 
habit of licentiousness, unchecked by religious or high moral 
restraint, the manhood of the countrx* has reached a condition 
of physicial degeneration which is startling to contemplate. 
We are told tliat three-fifths of all the men who have applied 



11 

for enlistment in the arm\- and nav\' have been adjudged 
physically unfit for either branch of the service, either because 
of under-size or other physical disqualifications. It may 
be granted that this is true only of the lower grades of society. 
Nevertheless it is a very significant straw, sliowing an alarming 
drift and tendency toward degeneration. It is not unlikel\- that 
the discipline of army and navy life, together with the arous- 
ing of the higher qualities of our manhood, such as patient 
endurance of hardships, obedience to authority, self-denial, 
the awakening of physical and moral courage, may turn the 
tide in the stream of our physical manhood. It has been said 
that the veterans of our late war are among the strongest 
and best preserved men in the Nation. The unshrinkable 
proportions of our pension list would seem to go far toward 
establishing this fact. 

c The fact of war and the presence of national peril 
will call forth again from the ranks of our people a new 
race of heroes and patriots, who will come to the front 
in the arnn-, the na\y and in the halls of Congress. 
Instead of military and naval martinets on the land and 
the sea, we shall again become familiar with names that 
will recall to mind and heart the \irtues and glorious 
deeds of Grant, and Sherman, and Sheridan, and Joe Hooker, 
and George H. Thomas; of Farragut and Porter, and the 
heroic commander of the gallant old Kearsage. In the cabi- 
net we shall again have our Stantons and Chases; amongst 
our governors there will be men like Morton and Andrews, 
and Curtin and Yates, and the halls of Congress will again be 
glorified by men who will be something more than clever and 
ambitious partisan politicians and heads and representatives 
of great corporations, mining interests, commercial trusts, and 
financial syndicates. These and other results will grow out of 
the war, if it be a long and stubborn one; and e\en (which 
God grant) if it shall be a short and successful one, by 
giving us something else to think about and li\e for beside 
money and social dissipation, it will have gi\en pause to the 
present low commercial plane on which we have been living 
for the past quarter of a centur)-. It will break the golden 
but sordid pot in which our country has become bound and 



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12 013 -y-. .-..«,„ 

cramped, and make room for the roots of freedom, pc^c..^. 
and national righteousness to spread abroad. 

d Nor can we be blind to the fact that of late years we 
have been in a state of social war amongst ourselves. The un- 
holy and unequal struggle between labor and capital, the 
growing discontent of the working classes with the towering 
arrogance of the great corporations, and the selfishness and 
contempt of some of our multi-millionaires for the sorrows and 
struggles of the poor, have led to discontent, riot and violence ; 
to a phase of socialism not much different from anarchism, 
which has threatened the stability and the very foundations 
of our country's institutions, and put the great experiment of 
free government to a strain that it has hardly been able to 
bear. The army and navy will be largely recruited from 
the ranks of the common people, and even those who have 
been discontented and unhappy with the ci\ic and economic 
conditions of things, and will come forth from the war with a 
deeper and truer estimate of our country's greatness and 
righteousness the most unselfish and sordid money getters 
in the land will be loth to turn oppressors of those who 
have periled life and limb to protect and make strong the 
very institutions under which their wealth, greatness and 
power have been fostered. 

e Finally, and not of least importance, if we succeed in 
beating back and breaking the power of Spain and contribute 
to the overthrow of the present dynasty, it may be that by so 
doing, ue shall be giving to the Spanish people an opportunity 
for shaking themselves free from that type of civilization 
which gave birth to the Inquisition; which produced such 
men as Tarquamada, Philip and Alva; Cortez, Pizarro and 
Weyler; which to-day finds its chief enjox-mont in the Sunday 
bull-fight, and its highest military achievements in the de- 
liberate starvation and massacre of a people whom their utmost 
military valor and skill have failed to conquer. 



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